The Sport of Kings (18 page)

Henrietta remained where she was on her side of their fence, affectless and staring.

“Come here, child,” said Mrs. Miller with a beckoning gesture. Ginnie was the youngest of the Miller siblings, but had married a man named Marley, so she was Ginnie Marley. Her husband was quiet and when he drove past them on the road, he lifted only two fingers from the wheel by way of greeting. As if his lack of a first name rendered the marriage null and void, everyone still called her Mrs. Miller, though Henrietta could not recall her father referring to the woman at all.

Henrietta crossed the wet road and stood next to this woman she'd only seen from a distance. She was winded, as though coming from a dance, and her hair, slightly gray with voluminous curls puffed up from her face, resembled petals framing the rosy heart of a flower. It was the ruddy face of a life lived outdoors, her cheeks red as if sunburned, though it was only the middle of spring.

“My goodness,” the woman said, “you're just a little slip. I guess it runs in the women of your family.” She was leaning down slightly, and Henrietta saw her eyes were the color of dark chocolate. She said, “Well, I need your help. A couple of my cows got past my water gap, and my husband just took both my girls back to college. I need you to help me guide them back along the road. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Henrietta said.

“Then let's you and me go get us some beeves.”

Henrietta followed her down the road away from the Miller drive, along the cow pasture, which spread to the west, inclining mildly to a hillock about a half mile away. A concrete waterer had been poured there, topping the rise like a crown on a grassy head. Black-and-white cattle were scattered about here and there, lowing a deep and dolorous sound.

They passed the spot where Forge Run ran dark-complected and swollen through a galvanized culvert under the road, running its course along the Miller property. The water gap was just two steel hoods from old cars chained across the creek to form a primitive stanch. One of the hoods still bore traces of its original red paint like old blood. On the far side of the artificial barrier, she saw the bulky figures of two black-and-white Holsteins steeping placidly in the muddy water. The water rose up past their hocks, but no further. They stood there appearing drowsy and mild until the two figures approached, then they bawled in tandem.

“How did they get out?” asked Henrietta.

“Well, when the water all rose up, the water gap went so”—Mrs. Miller raised her flattened palms so they were parallel to the ground—“and they just sort of squeezed on through and went about their merry way.”

“They didn't get very far,” said Henrietta.

“I think they used up all their fighting spirit just getting through the water gap.”

They stopped at the top of the bank and looked down at the cows.

“Hello, my pretties,” said Mrs. Miller, and then turned to Henrietta. “So, here's the plan. I'm gonna go on in there and move them up your way, and I just need you to head them off down the road toward the house.”

“Okay.”

“So set your legs apart like you mean business. Now, don't be scared.”

“I'm not scared,” Henrietta snorted. She set her legs apart like a sawhorse.

Mrs. Miller waded on into the creek upstream of the cows and the water plashed around her legs and filled up her green galoshes as little eddies spooled grayly away from her. The cows eyed her warily and were already making their first lurching motions toward the bank when the woman came up behind them, shooing. They jolted forward with real force, fat harlequins clambering out of the water, which shook in coffee droplets from their shining black limbs. They were clumsy on the rocky bank, slipping and lunging, their quarters jolting under the skin as they climbed.

“Just direct them,” Mrs. Miller called, and Henrietta faced them down with her arms spread.

“No sudden motions now.”

Henrietta made subtle pointing hand gestures as if they were wet airplanes being directed on tarmac, and they went easily as directed, trotting heavily, but veering for the middle of the road. Mrs. Miller came scrambling out of the creek, wet to above her knees, and moved on past Henrietta in a hustle to the first cow that was heading Forge-ward.

“Don't let them get in the road now,” she said over her shoulder. “I want you between that cow and the car. I can afford to lose neighbors, but not cattle.”

“Okay,” said Henrietta.

She looked over her shoulder. “Honey, I'm kidding.”

Henrietta walked beside the second cow with both her hands out toward its flank. It moved steadily along as though it were a wholly unremarkable event to walk on the wrong side of its pasture fence with the larger body of the herd gathering now as a congregation to watch. Mrs. Miller kept casting over her shoulder to check on their progress. As the Forge paddocks came into view, she said, “Guess there's a lot to keep a girl busy on a horse farm, huh?”

“I guess.”

“What does a girl like you like to do?” she said.

Henrietta shrugged, a strange new mood was on her; the rains and her mother's absence had brought it on. “Study diagrams.”

Ginnie reared back. “Diagrams! Of what?”

“Animals and plants. The history of their evolution. That sort of thing.”

The woman hooted and looked back over her shoulder again with a different expression on her face, as though just discovering a different child in Henrietta's place, one who deserved a second glance. “Is that right,” she said.

Encouraged, Henrietta said, “Did you know there are fifty thousand species of trees? That number's going down. They come in five shapes—round, conical, spreading— What's that?”

Mrs. Miller turned to see that Henrietta was pointing at the cursive
M
on the cow's rump.

“That's a brand.”

“What's a brand?”

“We burn our family letter into them so if they ever get out like today, everybody will know they're ours and bring them back to us. Just like puppies.”

“You brand puppies?”

“No, honey,” said Mrs. Miller.

They were now approaching the squat Miller bungalow, where begonia pots hung in bursts of color from the scalloped porch trim and the flower beds stood pert in a wealth of watered soil.

“Run ahead and unlock the gate,” said Mrs. Miller, and Henrietta did as she was told, pulling the pin and springing the gate, so the woman could pass on through with the two cows just as the herd was beginning to gather in a mass around the sojourners. With the cows captured, they stopped and watched the reunion, their forearms resting on the top steel rung like two old cowpokes, the older barely taller than the younger.

From this place, Henrietta had a new and clear vision of their home across the road and the black stallion barn atop the rise. Their stone fence was trim and neatly kept except where it had been rearranged by the swollen stream. The Millers' fence was crumbled and tumbled out of its original form along its length, limestone lying everywhere in heaps.

“Our fence is prettier than yours,” Henrietta said.

Mrs. Miller snorted once and shook her head. “A good-looking fence is not high on my list of priorities. In my opinion, some people mind a little too much about how a place looks and not enough about how it runs.” She looked very pointedly at the girl, but Henrietta was looking across the road to their fields, the grass mowed just so, the fences white as cotton bolls.

“Good looks are an evolutionary mark of health,” she said. “That matters when it comes to mating. I read that.”

Ginnie cocked her head. “Based on my cows, I'm gonna say that's probably not the whole story. In fact, that sounds like something a man would say to a woman just to get the upper hand. Both of my daughters are dating right now, and they're running into all sorts of foolishness like that.” Ginnie leaned down and grasped one of her galoshes by the shank and gave it a tug. It came off with a sucking sound and brown water poured out in a stream like old tea from a kettle stroop. Her socks were gray and sodden. Then she said, “You know, I used to have a big old crush on your daddy when I was about your age.”

“Really?” said the girl. “Did he want to marry you?”

Ginnie laughed again. “If he did, he had a poor way of showing it,” she said. “But things turn out the way they should. Just think, if I'd married your daddy, then I never could have married the man who holds the Guinness World Record for the least words ever spoken in a marriage.”

Henrietta's eyes widened. “Really?”

“Honey, I'm kidding,” she said. “But you know,” she went on suddenly, turning toward the girl with a level gaze. “Mind how you grow up. Strive to be a good egg. You're gonna have to watch yourself. You're kind of swimming upstream if you know what I mean, which you probably don't.”

Henrietta just stared at her blankly. Then Mrs. Miller reached down, took her time removing her other rain boot as she gripped the gate with her free hand, and said, “I'll tell you another secret.”

“What?”

“Your daddy tried to buy us out. Twice.”

Henrietta's eyebrows rose up in little arcs of surprise. “He wanted your cows?”

“Well, I don't expect that was the attraction, no,” Mrs. Miller said. “But he wouldn't offer anywhere close to what this place is worth. My own daddy wasn't very fond of your daddy, truth be told. He'd have sooner sold it … Well, I probably shouldn't tell you that.” She sighed, struggling her feet back into her floppy boots.

“Why?”

She turned a mild, considering eye on the girl. “Well, I don't know,” she said. “I really don't know. I suppose it's just the truth when it's all said and done.” Then she said, “How old are you?”

“Almost ten.”

“That's why. You're just a little slip. You're too young for the workings of the world. The world can be a pretty crappy place. Just have a good time being a little girl.” She sighed.

“I like your cows,” said Henrietta.

Ginnie Miller actually blushed a bit when she smiled. “Well, they're not Cardigan Corgis, but … yes,” she said. “I'm very fond of them myself. I really can't eat beef anymore. I think I'd consider eating my husband before one of my herd. That was a joke.” Then she cleared her throat and said, “You know, sometimes the apple falls pretty far from the tree. And if it's really brave, when it grows up, it can get up and walk over to another orchard. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

“No, I suppose not.” She smiled, and Henrietta realized suddenly the hour was late, and her father would be wondering where she was, so she moved toward the wet black ribbon of the road and the house beyond. Then Ginnie called out, “Henrietta Forge, did you have fun today?”

Henrietta didn't even have to hesitate; she turned and, walking backward, she called, “Yes, I did!”

*   *   *

She lay there on the davenport in the front parlor by the phone, her hands still smelling of the damp outdoors, but resolved not to move until the call came. No one bothered her, her father still out with the horses and the cleaning lady polishing and vacuuming around her. When the phone rang in the early evening, she had only to reach over her own head without rising to grasp the receiver. It was her mother.

“I've been missing you,” Judith said in a voice too gentle.

“You have an apartment in Lexington now?” Henrietta blurted. “But you still live here, right?”

“Is that what your father told you?”

“He said he wants you to come back home right now.”

There was silence on the line.

“When are you coming home?”

“Well,” her mother said, and sighed. “I think I'll come out to the farm tomorrow.”

“Why can't you come right now?”

“I'll come tomorrow, darling.”

But her mother didn't come the next day. She came the day after that, and she arrived wearing a dress Henrietta had never seen before, her hair cut in a glassy blonde bob, and with a pained twinge the girl struggled with a strange, phantom sensation that Judith had been gone not three days but three years. She was altered like a heap of coins melted down and newly minted into a foreign currency. When they hugged, her mother's arms were painfully thin, but maybe they had always been so? Henrietta heard a kissing sound above her head but did not feel the press of lips anywhere.

Her mother said, “You look good, Henrietta.” Even her voice was music playing in another room. “Why don't we go out to the porch?”

“Where's Daddy? I want him to come too.” Henrietta managed to turn herself halfway around, looking wildly behind her without letting go of her mother.

“I'm not really sure.” That old, barely suppressed irritation was audible.

“Daddy!” she called out into the house, and she felt her mother flinch as the word came echoing back.

“Henrietta!” Judith snapped, and then softer: “Your father's not here right now.”

“Where is he?”

“He didn't want to be here for this.”

Now it was Henrietta's turn to be silent. She stared mutely at her mother, and where the older woman expected to see confusion, there was only a dark kind of withholding, which was new. The girl let go of the hem of her mother's jacket, which she had wrenched up into the sweaty heart of her fist. Judith smoothed it down and Henrietta saw her manicure was the color of a ripe raspberry. She used to bite her nails, but that was different now too.

“Let's go out to the porch,” Judith said. “I always hated the inside of this house.”

“Well, I like it.”

“You don't even know what you like yet,” her mother said. “This house is like living in another time. And not a good one.”

They went out and they sat on the porch swing, but Henrietta's legs were not long enough to reach the wood planks, so she was forced into a lulling motion by her mother. She clung to the chain for balance but it was rusted. It left visceral stains on her palm.